This mask, made with a double layer of cotton fabric, ribbons and a plastic sheet, has generated a buzz in Belgium. It was approved by Belgian virologists and a video where Wendy explains how to make the mask at home has been published on \u201cmakefacemasks<\/a>\u201d, a Belgian site run by volunteers. Her tutorial has already been downloaded thousands of times.<\/p>\n According to the World Health Organization (WHO),<\/a> over 5% of the world\u2019s population has disabling hearing loss. Reading a person\u2019s lips and seeing facial expressions are vital for those who rely on visual communication, such as lip reading or using sign language.<\/p>\n Listening with your eyes <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t realise just how much people who are hard of hearing listen with their eyes,\u201d explains Pascale van der Belen, director of the association Info-Sourds<\/a> who is herself partially deaf. \u201cI put on my glasses to listen. Beyond lip reading, everyone needs to see smiles, facial expressions, everything that\u2019s non-verbal to understand voices.\u201d<\/p>\n Louisa, an 11-year-old pupil at the Royal Woluwe Institute, says: \u201cIt\u2019s better for reading lips and to understand what people are saying.\u201d\u00a0 Words \u201clemon\u201d and \u201cFebruary\u201d, for example, are signed by the same hand gesture in Flemish sign language; you can only distinguish them by using your mouth.<\/p>\n Citizens initiatives on the rise <\/strong><\/p>\n In Brussels, book-binding business Brochage-Renaitre<\/a>, which employs mainly people with disabilities, has transformed its operations and trained its staff to make transparent masks. It has so far made 10,000 of them.<\/p>\n A more inclusive future<\/strong><\/p>\n For Marie-Florence Devalet, Director of Belgium\u2019s French-speaking deaf federation<\/a>, everyone who interacts with people who are deaf and hard of hearing in private and public sectors should wear a transparent mask. This includes staff who work over the counter, in public transport or in hospitals.<\/p>\n Looking beyond that, she believes it would be in the wider interest of the public to wear one of these masks.<\/p>\n \u201cThe interest goes beyond people who are deaf and hard of hearing. There\u2019s interest in having social interactions where you can see people\u2019s faces. Everyone needs to see a face,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n For United Nations Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, the COVID-19 crisis is affecting every aspect of our societies, revealing the extent of exclusion<\/a> that the most marginalized members of society experience.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople with disabilities are among the hardest hit by COVID-19. Looking to the future, we have a unique opportunity to design and implement more inclusive and accessible societies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Additional links:<\/strong><\/p>\n Wearing a mask can prove very challenging for those who are deaf and hard of hearing and who know how to lip read or need to see the faces of the people they are talking to. To overcome this issue, volunteers in Belgium have been crafting transparent face masks. Wendy Schellemans, an education assistant at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":36892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16768,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Volunteers](\"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/05\/ferm-sewing-transparent-masks.jpg\")
The citizens initiatives have not stopped there. In the town of Deinze in Flanders, over 160 volunteers from women\u2019s network Ferm<\/a> sewed 1,200 of the transparent masks in just five days to meet the demand for Flemish schools.<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/unric.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/05\/brochage-renaitre-sewing.jpg\")
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